Donald Trump is generally only too willing to opine on topics about which he knows nothing. But there’s one topic on which he is uncharacteristically muckle-mouthed: abortion.

When Chris Wallace asked if he wanted the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, he said, “If that would happen because I am pro-life, and I will be appointing pro-life judges, I would think that that will go back to the individual states.”

This made little sense, so Mr. Wallace asked again. This time, Mr. Trump said, “If we put another two or perhaps three justices on that’s really what’s going to be — that will happen. It’ll happen automatically in my opinion because I am putting pro-life justices on the court.”

This is hardly an answer, and it’s an odd evasion of responsibility. Usually Mr. Trump likes to take credit for making things happen — why would he want to pretend Roe v. Wade could be overturned “automatically”?

Mr. Trump’s uncharacteristic equivocation on abortion may be emblematic of something else: For his base, reproductive rights aren’t a core issue. He knows he can stir people up with talk of the wall, trade and locking up Hillary Clinton. But banning abortion has never been a big applause line for him, so he’s never had to develop a position on it. Amid all the horrors of this election season, the fact that the candidate hasn’t figured out a way to use the abortion issue to stir up hate is, I suppose, a small blessing.

Anna North is a member of the editorial board.

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The candidates debating in Las Vegas on Wednesday.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

Donald Trump can’t help being himself. It’s why he lost yet another debate and why he will lose the election.

The post-debate coverage has been dominated by Mr. Trump’s refusal to say he won’t accept the election results, and rightly so. It would be a shocking statement, except for the fact that he has spent much of this month attempting to undermine the foundations of our democratic system. That he would do so in a debate, despite how obviously self-destructive it was, underscores what has always been his main weakness: his unstable and disordered personality.

Mr. Trump obsesses over polls and knows that the overwhelming odds are that he will lose. Psychologically, he cannot accept that; for him, being labeled a loser is the ultimate humiliation. Therefore he has to manufacture an excuse for his impending defeat, and in this case, the excuse comes in the form of him repeatedly claiming that the election is rigged.

But that very claim, which is an extraordinary transgression of an unwritten and almost sacred democratic rule, not only will help insure his defeat, but will make the margin of that defeat even worse.

Most Americans are unsettled and unnerved by Mr. Trump, and the more exposed to him they are, the more unsettled and unnerved they become. He doesn’t come across as an agent of change, which would help him; instead, he comes across as a radical and destabilizing force, which hurts him.

Narcissism — in this instance the inability to accept that he is likely to lose to a woman in the biggest contest in the world — was at the core of Mr. Trump’s answer about not being prepared to say he would abide by the outcome of the election. What Americans saw almost instantaneously in that answer is that the Republican nominee for president puts himself — his vanity, his self-obsession, his need to project dominance and therefore his need to win — far above everything in life, including the best interest of the nation. All of us struggle with pride and none of us is selfless; but no one we have ever seen in American political life is as egotistical and selfish as Donald Trump.

That character flaw has led him to several terrible moments during this election, including the one in Wednesday’s debate that sealed his defeat. Earlier in this campaign he was unable to cite his favorite Bible passage. Here’s one that he could have learned from and that foreshadowed his fate: Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

Peter Wehner served in the last three Republican administrations and is a contributing opinion writer.

Now that the full cycle of debates has come to an end, there is at least one clear winner: the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Two questions in the vice-presidential debate, along with two from Chris Wallace in last night’s presidential showdown, referred to the committee, which is devoted to deficit reduction, and treated its analyses and proposals as matters of settled fact.

Near the end of the debate, Mr. Wallace declared, “The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has looked at both of your plans, and they say neither of you has a serious plan that is going to solve the fact that Medicare’s going to run out of money in the 2020s, Social Security is going to run out of money in the 2030s.” Mr. Wallace went on to suggest that only a “grand bargain” combining tax increases with Medicare and Social Security benefit cuts could solve the problem.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is an eminently respectable organization, led by distinguished former members of Congress, and its analyses of budget data are sound. I often agree with the organization’s viewpoint.

But it is a viewpoint, and it is hardly the only one. Countless economists, budget analysts and other experts would argue that long-term shortfalls in those two programs can be addressed by controlling health care costs and raising the cap on the Social Security tax, so that higher earners pay a little more.

Others would point out that “entitlements,” which are simply a budget category, have no special status on the chopping block, and cuts to military spending, for example, could achieve the same purpose. And other economists argue that any aggressive move toward deficit reduction would be unwise while the economy is still fragile.

These are no less responsible views.

Imagine a question such as this: “According to the nonpartisan Sierra Club, unless we reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, climate change will be catastrophic. What kind of carbon tax or cap-and-trade plan would you propose to avoid this result?” This is a trick question of sorts, because in five hours of debate, not one question about climate change was asked.

But if it had been, this perfectly reasonable inquiry would have been denounced as leading, accepting the argument of an advocacy group, and presuming the appropriate policy solution, just as Mr. Wallace’s question did with the “grand bargain.”

For several years, this dogma about “entitlements” has held the status of received fact among journalists and pundits. It’s hard to think of another interest-group argument that has had such influence on conventional opinion. And usually politicians have followed along, notably President Obama, who spent much of the middle period of his presidency in search of the “grand bargain” suggested by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Remarkably, though, neither candidate last night played along. Donald Trump blustered that his tax cuts would generate economic growth of “5 or 6 percent.” Hillary Clinton rejected Social Security benefit cuts, arguing that no more than a modest increase in the cap on payroll taxes was needed. And she promised to reduce Medicare spending by going after the “drivers” of health care costs, to “increase value, emphasize wellness.”

The debate moderators have not caught up, but American politics has finally turned away from the suffocating belief that cuts to the two largest programs in the entitlement category of the budget are the only way to ensure long-term economic health. Only one presidential candidate has a realistic alternative, but nonetheless, it’s a breakthrough.

Mark Schmitt is the director of the political reform program at New America.

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Why was there virtually no attention paid to climate change in the debates? Maybe because not enough people care enough about it.

The week after the second presidential debate felt like Shark Week on the Trump reality network, with the Great White himself thrashing around in his own blood as Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers surged. His shackles were off; there were high expectations going into the threequel.

Threequels present a unique challenge: audiences expect the exact same cast to make them feel the exact same way the first two installments did, but with an entirely new and original storyline. In the reality television business, we often work with the cast to come up with the storyline prior to shooting, and while we may not know how it ends, we know more or less what’s at stake and what each character wants.

The first debate was exciting: the candidates faced off for ninety minutes in a raw, unedited exchange. Mrs. Clinton baited Donald Trump and he came unraveled. The second debate, taking place two days after Mr. Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape came out, had an even more irresistible narrative: American women were threatened by a sexual predator loose in Town Hall, and our potential first female president came to the rescue. Mr. Trump himself, unable to fight the power of the woman-in-peril storyline, tried to re-cast it with Bill Clinton in the villain role. It flopped, and for about twelve days, so did he.

For the third debate, an election-fatigued America was promised a dangerous Donald, a wounded underdog with nothing to lose – and Mr. Trump does seem genuinely baffled to be losing this election despite what even his detractors have to admit is far superior entertainment value. What he’s failed to realize is that his preferred storyline, a crime drama about a “nasty woman” stealing the election from hardworking white Americans, doesn’t work when it’s full of comedy gold like his “puppet” comeback, his anger over an Emmy snub, and his promise to “keep us in suspense” about whether or not he’ll respect the results of the election.

That’s because Mr. Trump’s problems as a candidate mirror his problems as a reality TV star. He’s not a good collaborator. Television, like politics, is a team sport. Editors on “The Apprentice” have complained that because of his capricious boardroom decisions, they often had to go back and reverse-engineer the results of challenges so that his choices made sense.

Mr. Trump doesn’t care about details – of foreign policy, the Constitution, or audio recording. In the debates, Mr. Trump has repeatedly interrupted Clinton, a no-no in reality TV, as it makes editing dialogue impossible, and a no-no in electoral politics, as it turns off voters, especially women.
Even Mr. Trump’s promise to “leave us in suspense” as to whether or not he’ll honor election results, which seems like good TV, ignores the fact that this is a threequel, a final installment. Voters want this election to end, and we’re more interested in who wins than in what Donald Trump does after he loses.

The headline from last night’s debate nearly writes itself: A major party presidential candidate refused to accept the legitimacy of the 2016 election.

This is unprecedented in recent political history, and Donald J. Trump will undoubtedly wallow in the scorn of the mainstream press over the next few days. Yet I found myself wondering, as debate co-watchers gasped over Mr. Trump’s statements, whether any of the Trump supporters I know back home in southern Ohio will actually care.

The answer is probably no. At the core of his appeal is a rejection of mainstream political norms, and this is just another example of Mr. Trump slaughtering a proverbial sacred cow.

The question now is not whether Mr. Trump will lose the election — he will — but whether the segment of our country that gasps when he delegitimizes our democratic institutions can ever be reconciled to those who cheer the same.

J.D. Vance is the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” and a contributing writer

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The presidential debate was another exercise in narcissism, bombast and mendacity by Mr. Trump. One could only hope that this might be the last grand display of his gross unfitness to be president.

By the end, Hillary Clinton was like a champion matador, moving masterfully around the perpetually snorting, spewing, infuriated bull she had finally goaded into going off on the same senseless, paranoid, alt-right tears. Donald Trump stomped off on one bizarre, history-making rant after another, while Mrs. Clinton deftly stepped around his horns and stuck another banderilla between the shoulder blades.

Never before has an American candidate for president seemed to openly revel in the successes of a foreign terrorist organization against American troops and their allies, as Mr. Trump seemed to when he crowed that resistance in Mosul is “much tougher than we thought.” Never has one accused his opponent of stealing or losing “six billion dollars” from the State Department. Never has one accused his opponent of paying demonstrators “$1,500"to start riots at his rallies, or described the NATO alliance as a protection racket. (Mr. Trump simultaneously credited himself with making the Euro-patsies pay off.)

Mr. Trump sunk to new lows of infantile nonsense, unable to restrain himself from nonstop mugging and smirking, and shooting off his usual, schoolboy taunts and jibes. “You can’t,” Mr. Trump told us, when Mrs. Clinton said, “Let me translate this.” Other brilliant pieces of repartee included constant repetitions of “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong,” “Why don’t you give back the money?” “You know it, and I know it, and everybody knows it,” “We’ve heard this before, Hillary,” and the grand, misogynistic finale, “Such a nasty woman.”

Before it was all over, Fox’s Chris Wallace — who, incidentally, proved himself by far the best moderator of the debates but who, like all the rest, offered not a single question on climate change — was practically remonstrating with Mr. Trump to join his own daughter in pledging to accept the election results. Mr. Trump, to the end, would offer only another, thoroughly childish rejoinder: “I will tell you at the time. I will keep you in suspense.”

It was an appropriately petulant response, a schoolboy’s holdout when caught in a petty crime, or an outright lie. It would be no more than another self-inflicted wound on his candidacy, save for the fact that he was trying to hold the Constitution of the United States and our civic unity hostage. He then went on to say that the whole election was already rigged simply because Mrs. Clinton had been “allowed” to run, as opposed to being, presumably, in jail or under indictment. From schoolboy to caudillo, in one leap.

It was, like every other aspect of the election that Mr. Trump has touched, a degrading spectacle. But on top of it was added, once again, further proof that this would-be Berlusconi doesn’t seem to even realize how the American constitutional system operates, repeatedly berating Mrs. Clinton for not having fixed, single-handedly, everything wrong in the world, including his own accountants’ financial wizardry with his taxes.

He seemed to believe, right to the end, that Mrs. Clinton had spent the last 30 years as dictator of America, or perhaps the world, instead of being a single member of the Senate, and then a cabinet official. No doubt this reflects Mr. Trump’s own view of what the American presidency is. It is a belief as preadolescent as everything else about his candidacy. To reward this tired demagogue with a vote would be as absurd as electing Dennis the Menace to the highest office in the land.

Kevin Baker is an essayist and the author, most recently, of “America the Ingenious.”

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Donald Trump at the end of the debate on Wednesday.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

When Melania Trump stood by her man-child the other night on CNN over the lewd comments to Billy Bush on a hot mic, she told Anderson Cooper that her husband “was led on — like, egged on — from the host to say dirty and bad stuff.’’

She was offering her best defense. But it was actually the best damnation.

At the final debate tonight in Las Vegas, Donald Trump once more showed how easily egged on he is.

Continuing to deploy lethal darts from her team of shrinks, Hillary Clinton baited Trump into a series of damaging nails-in-the-coffin statements. And it was so easy. The one-time litigator prosecuted the case against Trump, sparking another temperamental spiral, as effectively as Chris Christie once broke down Marco Rubio.

In Trump’s warped fun-house mirror of a psyche, every rejection is a small death. That is why he harps on humiliation, that America is being humiliated on the world stage, that we are losing potency — a theme that resonates with angry voters who feel humiliated by their dwindling economic fortunes and angry about illegal immigrants and refugees swarming in who might be competition.

She once more proved adept at getting her rival’s goat: She again contended that he’s not a self-made man but a spoiled rich kid who was underwritten by his father and she accused him of choking on bringing up the issue of who would pay for the wall when he met with the president of Mexico.

Trump tried to stay calm, but he can never let go of a slight.

He defended himself on groping charges by saying, “Nobody has more respect for women than I do.’’ But he ended up, after Clinton’s hazing — “Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger” — blurting out as she talked about entitlements: “Such a nasty woman.’’

No doubt it is hard for a man — whose lovely, sphinx-like wife rarely talks at dinners with friends to make room for more talking by Trump — to listen to an opinionated woman speak dismissively to him over 90 minutes.

When Clinton called Trump a Putin puppet, he unraveled, once more proving how malleable he is with anyone from Vladimir Putin to Clinton, who either praises him or pokes him.

“No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet,’’ he said, going into what the former Obama chief speechwriter Jon Favreau tweeted was “a full Baldwin.’’ Talking about Putin, Trump once more offered the simple reason he has flipped his party’s wary stance toward the Evil Empire, subjugating his party’s ideology to his own ego: “He said nice things about me.’’ Similarly, he reduced a debate about the Supreme Court to the fact that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had attacked him and had to apologize.

He was so unnerved, he said one of the most shocking things ever heard in a debate, putting his ego ahead of American democracy. Asked by the admirable debate moderator, Fox News’ Chris Wallace, if he would accept the results of the election or reject it as rigged, Trump replied coyly and self-destructively: “I will tell you at the time,’’ adding, “I will keep you in suspense.”

The inanity continued, naturally, when Trump spinners talked to the press after the debate.

As The Washington Post’s Robert Costa tweeted, Sarah Palin told reporters that Trump will accept only a “legitimate” election, and anything else would betray those who “died” for freedom.

And the Post’s Phil Rucker tweeted that “Giuliani just predicted Dems will ‘steal’ the election in Pennsylvania by busing in people from out of state to pose as dead people to cast ballots.’’

Trump tried to give what one of his biographers, Timothy O’Brien, calls his “Clint Eastwood ‘High Plains Drifter’ glare’’ and spaghetti Western talk. “We have some bad hombres here and we’re gonna get ’em out,’’ he said about illegal immigrants who commit crimes.

But he was all hat, no cattle. He gets so easily distracted by belittling statements — even though he dishes them out so easily — that he could not focus to make points in areas where Hillary is vulnerable.

In order to stop losing, he would have to stop losing it.

But he didn’t. He got egged on. Bigly.

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Hillary Clinton on Wednesday in Las Vegas.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

One of the things that have long defined the United States is that we are able to peacefully transition power every four years. This peaceful transition is one of the fundamentals of our democracy. Politics in this country can be fractious and messy but since 1789, there has been a presidential winner and the loser has accepted the results and conceded, if not always gracefully. Four years later, rinse and repeat.

Early in this election cycle, I was dismissive of Donald J. Trump. He was a lousy businessman and reality television star. He was a man with what seems to be a toupee and a bad fake tan who decided that he would tell people what they want to hear while basking in the attention he so clearly craved. He stood for nothing, I told myself, so he could not do much harm were he to stumble into power. How wrong I was. Mr. Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was designed to make disgruntled Americans feel like their fortunes might change with a Trump presidency. Really though, it was a slogan predicated on the idea that America could not possibly flourish without him. Mr. Trump made himself messianic and did so on the backs of immigrants and Muslims and women and the LGBT community — people who could ill afford to bear his burden and the very people his base resents.

And now, here we are, with less than three weeks until the election. The candidate of a major party is fomenting unrest and continues to self-destruct. The joke hasn’t been funny for a very long time. Hillary Clinton, a capable, intelligent woman is running against an unworthy opponent and we are so distracted by the putrescent carnival of his candidacy that there has been little opportunity to hold her feet to the fire on her hawkish foreign policy, and the other issues.

There have been many unprecedented developments during this 2016 election cycle but nothing is as appalling and unsettling as Donald Trump’s growing rumblings that the election is rigged because he is surely going to lose in a historic fashion. In tonight’s debate, Mr. Trump was asked if he would accept the election results and he said he would have to wait and see. This terrifying comment was, in part, a crumb he tossed to his base but given what’s at stake, this unserious candidate must be taken seriously.

We can’t dismiss his comment as immaturity, or the empty words of a sore loser and narcissist who thinks this is all a game. We have to recognize Mr. Trump’s blatant lack of respect for American voters, democracy or the gravity of the office of president. We have to recognize that he is trying to delegitimize and poison a Hillary Clinton presidency before it even begins. And we cannot let that happen.

Roxane Gay is an associate professor at Purdue University, the author of “Bad Feminist” and the forthcoming “Hunger,” and a contributing opinion writer.

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But jeepers, people, this is serious. Trump was refusing to acknowledge it was even possible for him to lose a fair fight. At one point, he announced the election was rigged because Hillary Clinton was in it.

Donald J. Trump dismissed Hillary Clinton with all the anger and contempt of a man who has repeatedly been called out for how he treats women. “Such a nasty woman,” he said.

Mrs. Clinton has pursued a calculated strategy of baiting her opponent to see if he would lash out. She called him a puppet of Vladimir Putin, among other digs. Mr. Trump clearly could no longer contain himself by the end of this debate.

That cutting dismissal, as well as his taunt that her husband didn’t agree with her, played to the heart of the gender dynamics of this election. A man hypersensitive to criticism of any kind was under constant challenge from a confident, assertive woman. Mr. Trump’s advisers, knowing that he had to win over women, particularly the suburban women who have voted Republican in the past, have tried coaching him to keep his cool. His daughter Ivanka tried putting forward a child care plan. But Mrs. Clinton got under his thin skin, and it showed.

In the first debate, he started off with elaborate courtesy. “Secretary Clinton,” he said, calling attention to how he was using the title, even as Mrs. Clinton called him “Donald.” But he couldn’t stop himself from interrupting her, reminding women of how often men have talked over them at work or at home.

When the Clinton campaign deployed Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe, in a campaign ad talking about how he shamed her for gaining weight, he doubled down, reminding women of how vulnerable they are to the male gaze.

The second debate, surely one of the most surreal on record, was consumed by the fallout over Mr. Trump’s boasts that his fame entitled him to force himself on women. His denials during that debate prompted woman after woman to come forward recounting how he groped them, claims he dismissed as lies.

Mr. Trump paraded women who say they had suffered at the hands of Bill Clinton, at a time when such degradations did not resonate in society as they do now and men were not held accountable. That was a double standard. But that tactic is also a way of blaming a woman for her husband’s infidelity, and it does not seem to have scored many political points among the women Mr. Trump needed to win over.

Mr. Trump went into this debate knowing that the polls show him trailing her in state after key state. The very women he has treated his whole life as objects to leer at or belittle now are exacting their revenge: Many tell pollsters they are not voting for him.

“Nobody has more respect for women than I do,” Mr. Trump insisted after Chris Wallace, the debate’s moderator, challenged him about the accusations of groping.

His own words contradicted his claim.

Susan Chira is a senior correspondent and editor on gender issues for The New York Times.

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Donald Trump answering a question at the third presidential debate.Credit
Josh Haner/The New York Times

At the outset of the debate, Donald Trump said he believed in the idea of originalism, offering an audience-friendly translation by promising that his nominees for the Supreme Court will “interpret the Constitution the way the founders wanted it interpreted.”

Nothing was more sacred to the founders than the peaceful transition of power. Without that, we don’t have a democracy, and more than anything else, that’s what 1776 and beyond was about. Yet asked if he would accept the result of this election, Mr. Trump said he’d think about it when the time comes, and then he’d let us know.

This amazing moment of noncommitment is already dominating the post-debate talk. It was indefensible, so don’t expect other Republicans — including his running mate, Mike Pence — to defend it. They’ll spin, maybe, by saying Mr. Trump just wants to make sure the vote count is accurate, or some such, but of course the Republican nominee just insinuated far more than that. He made a political mistake: You have to be fully in the Trump column, an unstoppable die-hard, to welcome the alarming uncertainty and instability of contested election results.

But beyond that, a candidate for president who is committed to upholding the Constitution would never leave the country in suspense about this question. Asked the easiest question of the night, with the stakes so high, Mr. Trump went for attention-grabbing, irresponsible suspense. He decided to act the part of the reality-TV star he once was, not the major-party standard-bearer he is supposed to be.

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the Times Magazine.

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A housekeeper at Trump Hotel Las Vegas watching the third presidential debate.Credit
Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Midway into the third and final presidential debate, Chris Wallace asked Donald Trump about all the women who have come forward to report that Mr. Trump had sexually assaulted them. Mr. Trump’s reply was desperate and surreally brazen.

“Those people – I don’t know those people,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the women who said he had attacked them. “I have a feeling how they came. I believe it was her campaign that did it.”

Mr. Trump then claimed that the Clinton campaign had paid people $1,500 apiece to foment violence at a Trump rally in Chicago. This was offered as indirect support for his new, preferred explanation for the string of devastating sexual assault allegations: The Clinton campaign pays women to lie.

“I didn’t know any of these women,” he said. “I didn’t see these women.”

One of those women, Natasha Stoynoff, disclosed that Mr. Trump once pressed her against a wall and forced his tongue into her mouth at his mansion in Florida. She was at his home to interview Mr. Trump and his pregnant third wife for a profile in People magazine. Maybe you don’t need to see a woman to attack her in an empty room in your mansion, but he knows her. He knows her.

“It’s all fiction,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s lies and it’s fiction. Probably or possibly all started by her very sleazy campaign.”

It’s all lies, all right. It’s all fiction. And “sleazy” is the perfect word, for sure. Sleaze from wingtips to combover.

Mr. Trump knows what he did. Mr. Trump knows what he is. So do we.

Will Wilkinson is the vice president for policy at the Niskanen Center and a columnist at Vox.

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Hillary Clinton at the conclusion of the final presidential debate.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

For the first time, for a few precious minutes, we had something like a normal debate. Donald J. Trump calmly proposed conventional conservative policies on taxes, social issues, and the Second Amendment. Similarly, Hillary Clinton articulated the standard Democratic critique of Republican tax plans and pitched other familiar proposals, such as comprehensive immigration reform, that her side has been proposing for years.

It was almost encouraging. But then, these candidates jerked us back to the sad reality of this election. Mrs. Clinton reminded us why she is distrusted, with unconvincing answers about her ethics. Almost unfathomably, Trump even refused to say he would concede the election if he loses.

As the evening progressed, concrete solutions mostly disappeared and the tone became far more biting and sarcastic. The candidates were openly contemptuous and disrespectful of each other. Neither was hopeful. Neither seemed to speak to Americans with optimism. Neither seemed happy or excited at the prospect of being elected president.

In other words, the debate sank back to the grim status quo.

The point of politics is persuasion. A campaign is supposed to bring people into the fold. Candidates always have to reassure the true believers, yes. But more than that, they must persuade people on the fence and maybe even soften up those who are hostile.

No one in history has ever insulted another person into persuasion. That’s axiomatic. You can insult someone into a fight, or into a lawsuit, or into a divorce. But not into agreement. The most fundamental problem with these two candidates – illustrated so clearly in tonight’s debate – is that they both exhibit an apparent lack of understanding of this axiom. It’s not just a question of suboptimal communications. It speaks to the leadership deficit that has led so many Americans to believe they have no good choice.

Is this election a temporary aberration, or are the politics of contempt permanently replacing the politics of persuasion? Whether 2016 becomes an unpleasant memory or the new normal for our nation will depend on us – on our reaction to this election and the kind of leaders we reward going forward.

Arthur C. Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing opinion writer.

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The presidential candidates debating in Las Vegas on Wednesday.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

After watching the final presidential debate, and reminiscing about this absolutely absurd and historic election, I’m reminded of the poem “Auto Wreck,” by Karl Shapiro, which I read in elementary school.
“The traffic moves around with care, But we remain, touching a wound/That opens to our richest horror.”

This election cycle has opened up a uniquely American Pandora’s box of horrors and delights. I am forever changed. How can I ever go back to serious, boring talk about policies that could affect the lives of millions? How can I sit through sober conversations about foreign policy and individual liberties?

Sensationalism has replaced sobriety. Conspiracy theories and baseless allegations have replaced facts. Diplomacy and tact are mocked, and victories are measured not by intelligent policy positions but by snarky tweets and rhetorical low blows.

This is the election America deserves, not the one it needs. It encapsulates and unleashes our collective id on the world.

Despite the titillation, I’m sad. I recognize the tragedy. Because we all suffer, and will suffer moving forward. It’s like a super-size, fast-food meal or maybe even bad porn. It satiates you in the moment, but fills you with regret and shame.

But at least we were entertained.

Wajahat Ali is the author of the play “The Domestic Crusaders” and creative director of Affinis Labs, a hub for social entrepreneurship and innovation.

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Donald Trump during the final presidential debate.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

Remember when people, including me, thought that Donald Trump’s invitation for Russian hackers to invade Hillary Clinton’s emails was one of the most breathtakingly undemocratic things ever said by a presidential candidate? We were so naïve.

On the debate stage in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Donald Trump flatly refused, twice, to say that he would accept the results of the election.

Asked by the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News, whether he would make the same commitment to respect democracy made by his running mate, Mike Pence, and his daughter Ivanka, Trump gave us one of his smug looks. “I will look at it at the time,” he said.

I don’t take much of what Trump says seriously. He’s not going to build a wall on the Mexican border, just for starters, unless his own company gets the contracts. But there is nothing more precious to American democracy than the peaceful transfer of power according to the will of the voters. It’s the founding principle of our country.

Not, apparently, to Donald Trump, who earlier in the debate claimed to be a great champion of judges who applied the Constitution literally as it was written. (Which, of course, would mean that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton could never have voted, never mind become president.)

He blamed Hillary Clinton personally for inciting violence at his rallies. (A lie.) And said that the news media are colluding with the Democratic nominee to poison the minds of voters, which is also untrue unless quoting his own words counts as poisoning. Trump then went on to talk about the “millions” of people who are falsely registered to vote. Another lie.

Wallace asked Trump again to simply say he would honor the election results. Trump’s reply: “What I am saying is that I will tell you at the time. I will keep you in suspense.”

Clinton responded with a huge understatement. “That’s horrifying,” she said.

Trump won’t commit to honoring the election results. He is encouraging people to go to voting places to “monitor” voter fraud — a dog whistle for intimidating minority voters. And now he says he won’t stand by the American people’s judgment.

I don’t believe Trump is going to lead a popular uprising after Election Day. He’s not the leader of a movement, as he says. He’s a narcissist. If he loses, he’ll probably go back where he came from, to the haze of reality TV and shady business dealings.

But it was still terrifying to see someone in an American presidential debate implying that he did not respect the democratic system.

On the debt, Donald Trump says that his economic plan will unleash so much economic growth that rising debt – from record tax cuts and increased spending on defense – will not be a problem. That is dodging the issue.

To strengthen the financing of Medicare and Social Security will require tax increases or benefit cuts or some combination of both. Mr. Trump says only that he will cut taxes and that Obamacare must be repealed and replaced. That is simply not an answer.

Mrs. Clinton has quickly ticked off some of the tax increases she would support, such as raising the level of wages that are taxed to provide revenue for Social Security. She does not favor benefit cuts. The proposals she has put forth would not close the entire financing gap in Social Security, but they could close it part way.

Whether Donald J. Trump had thought up the phrase in what he calls debate preparation or it slipped spontaneously off his tongue, he opened his immigration answer with one of the night’s most memorable quotes – which quickly sparked a twitter storm and made meme writers get to work on both side of the Rio Grande.

“We have some bad hombres here and we are going to get ‘em out,” Mr. Trump said. Before that he had mentioned drug lords and others he wanted to deport.

Besides the comedy value, the phrase sums up Trumpism well – talking tough, playing on prejudice, but not suggesting a clear policy change. In short, playing to emotion rather than logic.

Deporting migrants who commit crimes is already American policy. Last year, 91 percent of people deported from the interior of the United States – i.e., not caught trying to cross the actual border – had criminal convictions.

Mr. Trump went on to say, “Under Obama, millions of people have been moved out of this country. They’ve been deported.” He was right. In total, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 235,413 people in 2015 alone. But as that is the case, Mr. Trump is proving that he is suggesting nothing different.

Hillary Clinton also said she wanted to continue the policy of deporting criminals. “I want to put our resources where I think they are most needed: getting rid of any violent person, anybody who should be deported,” she said.

Mr. Trump’s “bad hombres” phrase is distinctly softer than the toxic “they’re rapists” phrase that kick-started his campaign. And his immigration answer over all was notable for being softer than his earlier rhetoric, and calling for the deportation of criminals rather than the entire 11 million undocumented migrants. In this, it sums up another element of Trumpism: flip-flop.

Ioan Grillo is the author of “Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields and the New Politics of Latin America” and a contributing opinion writer.

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Donald Trump at the conclusion of the final presidential debate.Credit
Josh Haner/The New York Times

Donald Trump said during Wednesday night’s debate that he truly believes he will win the election.

He’s probably wrong in the traditional sense: Polls show he is unlikely to win the necessary electoral votes to become president.

But Mr. Trump has normalized racism and xenophobia — his comment Wednesday about “bad hombres” coming from Mexico was only the latest example. He has normalized sexism — when he referred to Mrs. Clinton as a “nasty woman” during the debate, it was one of his tamer comments. He has tacitly encouraged voter intimidation and called the legitimacy of the election into question, saying in the debate that he’s not sure if he’ll accept the results. He has brought the whole election season down to his level and ensured that any 2020 candidate who doesn’t brag about his history of sexual assault will look sane by comparison.

And if he doesn’t become president, he won’t have to deal with any of these problems. He can just sit back, perhaps from an anchor’s chair at his new TV channel, and watch.

No matter what happens on Nov. 8, Mr. Trump has already won in one way: He’s made a gigantic mess, and somebody else has to clean it up.

Anna North is a member of the editorial board

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Chris Wallace at the beginning of the presidential debate.Credit
Josh Haner/The New York Times

Over all, Chris Wallace was better than I expected. But he was pretty bad on fiscal issues.

First of all, still obsessing over the debt? Still taking leads from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget? Federal debt simply isn’t a pressing issue; there is no possible reason to make a big deal about it while neglecting climate change, where every year that action is delayed makes the problem harder to solve.

Then there was the discussion of economic policy. It was really bad – and inappropriate – when Wallace talked about the Obama stimulus, and simply asserted that it “led” to slow growth. That was editorializing, and bad economics.

The past eight years have actually been a huge experiment in macroeconomics. Saying that the Obama stimulus was followed by slow growth is a terrible argument: When you spend money to fight a terrible slump, weren’t any disappointments in performance arguably caused by whatever caused the slump, not by the rescue operation? But we have a lot of other evidence, all of which says that spending money in a slump helps the economy, and that the Obama stimulus was therefore the right thing to do.

Some of that evidence comes from the details of the stimulus itself, which had different effects in different regions – and that tells you a lot about how it worked, and the answer is that it was positive. Even more compelling is the anti-stimulus that came from austerity policies in Europe: Countries that slashed spending and raised taxes had much deeper slumps than those that didn’t.

Basically, events have strongly confirmed the Keynesian thinking that lay behind the Obama stimulus. The impression that it failed comes mainly from the fact that it wasn’t big enough to produce a rapid turnaround – and no, that’s not after-the-fact rationalization. I and others were practically screaming at the time that it wasn’t sufficiently large.

I suspect that Mr. Wallace doesn’t know anything about that; in his circles, the stimulus is assumed to have been a failure. The good news is that Mrs. Clinton knows better – a lot better – and is actually proposing a sensible mix of policies looking forward. Trump’s economics is far from the scariest thing about him, but it would be plenty scary if it weren’t for everything else he says.

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Donald Trump gesturing during the debate.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

Donald J. Trump shows that his greatest mastery is over the reality show drama. “I’ll keep you in suspense,” he said in response to Chris Wallace’s question about whether he would concede if he lost the election. He guarantees that we all will keep watching to see whether he will undermine American democracy.

Ironically, he accuses the media of being corrupt and dishonest, when he is a part of the media that is ostensibly debasing the American population. He accuses the election of being rigged, when reality shows like “The Apprentice” are rigged. And he accuses those who accuse him of sexual harassment or assault of seeking their 10 minutes of fame, which is also the premise of his reality television world.

His behavior is in keeping with reality television, in which those who survive and win are those who know that fictional reality is more important than worldly reality.

Worldly reality still manages to make itself visible, however. Hillary Clinton argues that Mr. Trump is owned by the Russians and the Chinese. Mr. Trump argues that Mrs. Clinton is owned by Wall Street. Sadly, they may both be right. That is what the reality show drama of the presidential debates may mask, but not completely, by drowning us in insults and tawdriness. Reality shows may be a spectacle, but at their core is an ugly kernel of reality.

Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author, most recently, of “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War.”

Hillary Clinton said the most important question of the debate was whether Donald Trump was willing to condemn Vladimir Putin’s attempt to interfere in the election – an unprecedented move by a foreign government – and she may be right.

Mr. Trump, however, did not have a good answer. He started to perspire and mostly spouted gibberish, unable to muster a convincing or coherent argument for what he would do to keep the country safe against the authoritarian Russian president who is challenging the United States in Syria and elsewhere and seeking to undermine the NATO alliance.

“I don’t know Putin,” Mr. Trump protested. “He said nice things about me,” which is hardly the serious answer one might hope for from a candidate seeking to lead the United States.

Instead, he argued that Mr. Putin, the authoritarian Russian president, has “no respect” for Mrs. Clinton and has “outsmarted her every step of the way” in Syria.

“Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States,” Mrs. Clinton responded in a rapier-like retort.

Once again, Mr. Trump conspicuously refused to acknowledge that Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state, has not been in office for more than three years and that Mr. Putin is bombing civilians in Aleppo in what may be a war crime in support of Bashar al-Assad, the brutal Syrian president.

Mr. Trump has consistently said he admired Mr. Putin and refused to acknowledge the unanimous conclusion of America’s 17 intelligence agencies that Russia has hacked the emails of the Democratic National Committee and other agencies.

Mrs. Clinton pressed him on this point, demanding that he explain why he encouraged Russia to conduct cyber attacks.

Mr. Trump again refused to accept the intelligence findings or even acknowledge the professionals behind them. “She has no idea whether it’s Russia, China or anybody else,” he said.

Only when the moderator, Chris Wallace, pressed Mr. Trump on whether he would condemn interference by Russia did the candidate say “by Russia or anybody else.” Nevertheless, Mr. Trump added, “if the United State got along with Russia, it wouldn’t be so bad.”

Carol Giacomo is a member of the editorial board.

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Donald Trump at the debate in Las Vegas.Credit
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Donald Trump “denigrates democracy,” as Hillary Clinton said, when he suggests that the election is rigged, or will be rigged, or that his opponent “shouldn’t have been allowed to run.” But he also shows a bizarre disregard for the idea that democracy is a collaborative enterprise, that it’s not a system in which a single individual exercises total power. That’s evident in his repeated claims that Clinton, as a senator, could have “changed the law” on, for example, the tax breaks he’s taken. It’s evident on his own side as well, with the idea that he can build a wall or single-handedly impose tariffs or taxes on companies that move jobs abroad.

Trump doesn’t understand the basics about how American government works, but beyond all the technicalities, he also shows a staggering lack of regard — or even acknowledgment of — democracy as a joint enterprise rather than a sole proprietorship.

Mark Schmitt is the director of the political reform program at New America.

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Hillary Clinton making a point on Wednesday night in Las Vegas.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

Well, that was exciting for me, as a Scotus nerd — the Supreme Court was up to bat first in the debate! And the exchange was sharply defining, most memorably on abortion.

In past elections, presidential candidates have soft-pedaled their views on the subject. This time, Mrs. Clinton sounded resolute and even righteous about defending a woman’s right to control one of the most “intimate and difficult” decisions about her health care.

Mr. Trump used strong language, too, describing how he wants to prevent the ripping of “the baby out of the womb” on the last day of pregnancy. This is what his base wants to hear: Many Republicans, especially religious ones, cite the prospect of future nominations to the court as their reason for supporting Mr. Trump, despite their distaste for, oh, just about everything else about him. So he checked that box. Though oddly, he didn’t simply say “yes” when the moderator, Chris Wallace, asked whether he wanted the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Maybe his old pro-choice self couldn’t quite bear to say it. Or maybe he wanted to soften his stance a bit — I heard a bit of moderation in his promise to appoint “pro-life judges” who would send the issue “back to the states.”

Mrs. Clinton talked to her base, too. She talked about her opposition, and Trump’s support, for defunding Planned Parenthood; the polls are with her on that one. She got in a gibe, reminding Mr. Trump of his (quickly retracted) statement of support for punishing women who seek abortions. (It’s a fairly logical end once you go down the road of outlawing the procedure, but abortion opponents are trained to talk about jailing “abortionists” not women.)

She described the “most heartbreaking” circumstances that often led women to late-term abortion: risk to their own life or health, or the discovery of serious birth defects. That’s not the only reason for abortion after the first trimester, but it’s a significant issue.

I’ll confess I felt a small thrill: More than at any big moment since the convention, Mrs. Clinton owned her feminism. She sounded like the first woman running for president, defending other women — our autonomy and our control of our own bodies.

Many of Hillary Clinton’s proposals are investments in human capital: Early education, debt-free college, apprenticeships. Investments in human capital are an effort to boost long-term productivity and promote growth. Recommending tax increases that would pay for those investments is an effort to ensure that bolstered economic output is not offset by a rising deficit. In other words, it is coherent.

Economic projections and economic history do not support Donald Trump’s assertion that big tax cuts at the center of his economic plan – his proposed tax cut would be the biggest ever – would promote growth for the middle class. High-end tax cuts during the George W. Bush administration, for example, only led to inequality and lopsided growth.

The economy under Mrs. Clinton’s plan would be flat at first and stronger later. Under Mr. Trump’s plan, the economy would get a boost at first from the cash unleashed by the tax cuts, but become much weaker later, as the huge deficits from the tax cuts reduced the plan’s initial positive effect on economic output.

Donald Trump is generally only too willing to opine on topics about which he knows nothing. But there’s one topic on which he is uncharacteristically muckle-mouthed: abortion.

When Chris Wallace asked if he wanted the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, he said, “If that would happen because I am pro-life, and I will be appointing pro-life judges, I would think that that will go back to the individual states.”

This made little sense, so Mr. Wallace asked again. This time, Mr. Trump said, “If we put another two or perhaps three justices on that’s really what’s going to be — that will happen. It’ll happen automatically in my opinion because I am putting pro-life justices on the court.”

This is hardly an answer, and it’s an odd evasion of responsibility. Usually Mr. Trump likes to take credit for making things happen — why would he want to pretend Roe v. Wade could be overturned “automatically”?

Mr. Trump’s uncharacteristic equivocation on abortion may be emblematic of something else: For his base, reproductive rights aren’t a core issue. He knows he can stir people up with talk of the wall, trade and locking up Hillary Clinton. But banning abortion has never been a big applause line for him, so he’s never had to develop a position on it. Amid all the horrors of this election season, the fact that the candidate hasn’t figured out a way to use the abortion issue to stir up hate is, I suppose, a small blessing.

Anna North is a member of the editorial board.

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Hillary Clinton speaking at the final presidential debate.Credit
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Throughout this election cycle, most women have yearned for the candidates to talk about reproductive freedom, to say the word abortion, to share their positions on Roe v. Wade. Tonight, after the endless gantlet of primary debates and two presidential debates, the candidates finally had a relatively robust discussion about abortion. Mr. Trump plainly pandered to his base, offering inaccurate, graphic rhetoric about late-term abortions while Mrs. Clinton spoke to the reality of late-term abortions, and the extremities, emotional and physical, for women who have to make that choice.

Mrs. Clinton is generally a strong debater but when she spoke on abortion and her commitment to upholding Roe v. Wade she was confident and passionate. Her words on abortion were a clear reminder that many, many women are going to vote for Hillary Clinton because our right to bodily autonomy and our very lives will be much safer.

Thus far, in fact, Mrs. Clinton has been confident and passionate in all her responses. She has taken the gloves off and seems far less tolerant of Mr. Trump’s empty, half-formed responses and barbs. She has plainly articulated her ideas and plans because she has ideas and plans to articulate. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, becomes increasingly unraveled when he meets the fragile borders of his limited knowledge. As he has in the previous presidential debates, he says exactly what his base wants to hear and he talks to and about Clinton with derision, at best. If he cannot present himself as a viable candidate, he will for sure do what he can to present Mrs. Clinton as equally unviable. The contrast between the candidates is stark.

Roxane Gay is an associate professor at Purdue University, the author of “Bad Feminist” and the forthcoming “Hunger,” and a contributing opinion writer.

Tonight’s debate highlights the contrast on abortion between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. She talked about women, their complex lives and their right and ability to make responsible decisions about their pregnancies. He talked about mythical day-before-birth abortions. She talked about the medical crises that make later abortions necessary; he talked some more about mythical day-before birth abortions. She reminded the nation that Mr. Trump called for punishing women who ended their pregnancies; if he had an answer, I missed it.

Mr. Trump has had months and months to educate himself on abortion and abortion rights – as a matter of law, medical practice, social policy and women’s lives. (Actually, he’s had his whole adult life, but never mind.) Many abortion opponents could have helped him sound compassionate and concerned for women: to talk about poverty, for example, and sexual violence and coercion, and the need to make a society more welcoming to mothers and families. These factors hardly justify making abortion a crime, but talking about them at least acknowledges that abortions happen for a reason other than women’s evil love of fetal destruction. Mr. Trump seems not to have bothered even to learn the talking points of his own side and couldn’t be bothered to pretend to care, either. Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, gave the answer pro-choicers have longed to hear: an acknowledgment that legal abortion is part of the fabric of women’s lives, sympathy for what women go through in crisis pregnancies, and respect for women’s ability to decide these matters for themselves.

Katha Pollitt is a columnist at The Nation and the author, most recently, of “Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights.”

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Donald Trump responding to a question during the presidential debate.Credit
Josh Haner/The New York Times

The debate started sluggishly, with both candidates sounding tired, and the hoarse-voiced Trump in particular seeming like an extinguished volcano, able only to belch out the occasional puff of noxious gas. But Hillary Clinton obviously had a plan and used it to goad Trump on the undocumented aliens he used “to build Trump Tower” and then to shackle him to the Russian computer hacks by calling him Putin’s “puppet.” It was an amazing, almost unprecedented moment in American history, to have one candidate openly accuse the other of being the stooge of a foreign potentate — and with the accused having no real rebuttal beyond, “I don’t know him.”

Kevin Baker is an essayist and the author, most recently, of the historical novel “The Big Crowd.”

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Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during the debate in Las Vegas.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

First, I’ll be honest. I was stone cold sober during the first two debates, and they both really hurt. For this one, I have a bottle of Glenlivet 18 year old single malt by my side (I take it neat, in case anyone cares to buy me a drink). I’ll need the Scotch in case my ears and eyes start to bleed.

Around immigration, Mr. Trump’s racial coding becomes most evident (although his singling out of Chicago as a crime-ridden city is also racially coded). He gestures at mothers whose children have been killed by undocumented immigrants. He argues that drugs flow over the border (clearly implying that they are being brought by those south of the border) while cash flows out. “We have bad hombres here,” he says, channeling his inner Clint Eastwood. The reality, however, is that walls won’t keep people or drugs out, and walls won’t keep profits in.

But sometimes Mr. Trump does score valid points.

When Hillary Clinton argues against deportation, Mr. Trump accurately pointed to the fact that President Obama has deported a great number of people. I hope Mr. Trump also highlights the extra-legality of the Obama administration’s use of drone strikes and kill lists, but I assume he would want to do the same thing.

Viet Thanh Nguyen is the author, most recently, of “Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War.”